[Ads-l] Quote: As a cure for worrying, work is better than whisky (Request ProQuest Cosmopolitan 1929)

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Tue Sep 6 00:53:01 UTC 2016


Unless your job is poetry.  After all, malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man.

LH


> On Sep 5, 2016, at 5:58 PM, ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> During 2016 ProQuest is launching a database called "Women's Magazines
> Archive 2" which will include "Cosmopolitan". I am hoping someone has
> access to this database and is willing to acquire and share scans of
> the article listed below. (Alternatively, someone might be willing to
> create scans from paper or microfilm.)
> 
> I have been asked to trace a quotation about work and whiskey
> attributed to Thomas Edison, and I believe it first appeared in an
> interview published in "Cosmopolitan". Here is the information I have
> pieced together.
> 
> Date: March 1929 (most likely date)
> Periodical: Hearst's International Combined with Cosmopolitan
> Article: Edison (title apparently includes the name "Edison")
> Author: Allan L. Benson
> Start Page 83, Quote Page 83
> Database: Google Books Snippet; Data may be inaccurate
> 
> [Begin excerpt]
> "But I have always found, when I was worrying, that the best thing to
> do was to put my mind upon something, work hard and forget what was
> troubling me. As a cure for worrying, work is better than whisky. Much
> better.
> [End excerpt]
> 
> The key lead pointing to the interview in "Cosmopolitan" was a passage
> printed in "The Detroit Free Press" in February 1929. Note that the
> March "Cosmopolitan" was circulating by late February.
> 
> [ref] 1929 February 16, The Detroit Free Press, Magazines, Quote Page
> 11, Column 5, Detroit, Michigan. (Newspapers_com)[/ref]
> 
> [Begin excerpt]
> Allan L. Benson, who has been interviewing Edison for 20 years, tells
> of his last and most interesting interview, in the March Cosmopolitan.
> The gods were with him he says for he caught the great inventor in a
> mood of relaxation. Edison talks on happiness, education and hobbies.
> As a sure cure for worry he says that work is much better than whisky.
> [End except]
> 
> Garson
> 
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